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The STAR Enrichment Center and Star Eco work in tandem to enrich the lives of children, adults, and animals. When animals are rescued from dangerous living situations or seized from the hands of smugglers, STAR Eco Station provides them with second chances at peaceful lives. But the facility doesn't just serve as a haven for more than 200 rescued animals. Perhaps just as importantly, it also educates the public as an environmental science museum. During public tours, guides lead guests through exhibits of rescued exotic animals, such as parrots, pythons, and wildcats, while explaining the habits, history, and New Year's resolutions of each creature. The recipient of multiple awards from media and government agencies, STAR Eco Station also provides educational outreach programs to more than 40 California school districts and works in concert with conservation organizations such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Paw Project, and Heal the Bay.
At the STAR Enrichment Center in Beverlywood, learning enrichment takes center stage for adults and children alike. Here, dedicated teaching professionals offer courses in STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), child development, visual and media art, and language. Through courses that range from pre-natal workshops to parent and child classes, the center has earned a reputation for hosting engaging curriculum for all ages. The Enrichment Center is also home to the STAR Prep Academy and STAR Preschool.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology
There’s almost no way to prepare for what lies within the miniature halls of The Museum of Jurassic Technology. The museum’s stated mission is “the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic.” While intriguing, this doesn’t necessarily help to clarify matters.
For further elucidation, you can turn to the New York Times, which describes the museum as a place where “some things are invented but seem true [and] others are true but seem invented."
The museum’s collection is the definition of eclectic. It includes sculptures mounted on the head of a needle, early 20th-century machines that may or may not be magical, and a fossilized horn that purportedly grew from a woman's head. If that’s not enough to pique your interest, there’s a set of early 20th-century letters mysteriously sent to astronomers at the Mount Wilson Observatory and portraits of Russian cosmonaut dogs from the 1950s. BBC Travel appropriately describes this series of bizarre exhibits as something like a “collaboration between Dave Eggers and David Lynch."

In 1981, college roommates Cheryl Krueger and Caryl Walker opened a bakery called Cheryl?s Cookies. Over time they began to use their ovens for more than just those eponymous cookies, and seven years later they opted to simplify the name to Cheryl's. These days the versatile bakery draws on 30 years of experience to craft treats and gift baskets that help mark special occasions, churning out an assortment of cakes and brownies alongside their signature happy-face cookies. Most of the treats are certified kosher and come in a variety of flavors, from snickerdoodle to buttercream. Sugar-free options sate sensitive teeth, and treats can be combined to create gift baskets, tins, and boxes for any informal or formal occasion.

Petroleum mogul Dr. Armand Hammer clung to life just long enough to see The Hammer Museum make its debut in 1990, passing away three weeks later. Without the founder’s support, construction screeched to a halt and spaces sat in varying states of completion. But not for long. The powers that be at UCLA saw Hammer’s vision, and took control of the abandoned museum in 1994. They restored it to its former glory by importing the university’s own collections and staff. Today, The Hammer’s unique compendium of works still hints at the unlikely collaboration that bore the museum all those years ago.
Its stockpile of masterpieces explores the modern-day in a contemporary collection of mostly drawings and photographs. Richard Hawkins’ disembodied zombie george green might best embody current artistic trends; his expressionless eyes stare from a yellow backdrop, the handiwork of an undead inkjet printer. Meanwhile, the Armand Hammer Collection, left behind by the museum’s namesake, balances george and other outlandish works with 19th-century art by Degas, Cézanne, and van Gogh.
It’s virtually impossible to predict whether rotating exhibits will land in classic or contemporary camps. They range from performance art installations—Floor of the Forest depicts two dancers moving through hanging jumbles of used clothing and ropes—to sculptures, paintings, and drawings. To cultivate better artistic understanding, the Hammer Museum hosts events including lunchtime art talks, tours, and screenings.

A giant forest stretches across most of California?but its impossible to hike there. Submerged just off of the state's rocky coast, large kelp forests make a home to diverse animal and plant life. Moray eels, leopard sharks, and giant sea bass all swim beneath the water, while sea otters splash at the surface. That's just one of the habitats on display inside the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium.
The 21,000-square-foot aquarium showcases Southern California's rich marine life, making it the largest aquarium of its kind in the world. The Susanne Lawrenz-Miller Exhibit Hall charts a journey through different regions, from the open ocean, to the mudflats, to the sandy shores. Other areas present a more immersive experience. The tide pool lets visitors touch a starfish, while the exploration center lets them crawl into a tunnel, where they find themselves surrounded by octopuses, sting rays, and other creatures that have signed contracts to make public appearances.
Cabrillo Marine Aquarium wants to keep all of these creatures around for the long term. Case and point: the aquarium houses a research library and an aquatic nursery, where the team raises young sea animals and trains young scientists.

In the late 1980s, the Simon Wiesenthal Center gathered top museum leaders and representatives to discuss new ways of teaching tolerance to a younger generation. Since 1993, the Museum of Tolerance has encouraged visitors to contemplate the effects of intolerance with interactive exhibits on the Holocaust as well as present-day discrimination. The guided, 70-minute sound-and-light presentation at the Holocaust exhibit recreates Nazi-occupied Europe, and the Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves exhibit showcases diversity through the personal histories of several American celebrities, including Billy Crystal and Carlos Santana. Some of the museum's features also examine more recent issues, such as the Tolerancenter, which highlights the struggles of the civil-rights movement and enlightens museum goers on contemporary human-rights violations. The museum also hosts special exhibitions, live testimonies from Holocaust survivors, and youth programs, such as anti-bullying workshops.